I am very happy to present you my work on Enslaved – “The Sleeping Gods – Thorn” ! It is a crazy mixed media based on some watercolor paintings 😀 Out on Nov. 11, it will feature rare and experimental material from 2010/2011, collected for the first time as a full-length album! Including an exclusive insight into the history of the recorded material by Grutle Kjellson.
The songs originally appeared on extremely limited EPs between the full-length albums “Axioma Ethica Odini” and “Riitiir”, and is recorded both in Solslottet Studio in Bergen, as well as the band member’s own studios and partly in the deep woods of Valevaag on the south-west coast of Norway. Like the songs itself, the production is a mix of old and new; high tech and no-tech – a mix of concepts that has been essential in achieving the signature sound Enslaved is famous for today. Ivar and Grutle co-produced the material together with long-time collaborator Iver Sandøy.
The album has lyrics sung in both Norwegian, English and Old Norse, and the theme centres on mythology and the esoteric side of the runes; as well as contrasting the Norse Ways as a polytheistic belief system to the monotheistic plague of the Big World Religions. The music nods respectfully to the wildly varying deities that make up the pantheon of inspiration for us, both “then” and “now”. There are traces of the both proto-black metal of Bathory, the classic Rock and Heavy Metal of the 70s and 80s, the synthisized and sequenced masters of the 70s, prog-rock, world/ Norse folk music, Norwegian Black Metal of the 90s, modern classical music, goth rock a la Fields of the Nephilim and much more.
